


singin' this'll be the day that i die

by redbelles



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Blood and Gore, Canon-Typical Violence, Gen, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-16
Updated: 2019-07-16
Packaged: 2020-06-26 19:13:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,866
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19774630
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/redbelles/pseuds/redbelles
Summary: It’s big, so fucking big, and it’s not dead. It shifts, gathers itself, and he helped build it. He knows somehow—some instinctive hindbrain bullshit, maybe, or a memory from his time as a puppet—what it’s going to do.Or: five ways Billy doesn't die in the Battle of Starcourt.





	singin' this'll be the day that i die

**i. run**

The world comes back into focus.

Or: it doesn’t. Everything is blurry with tears, salt dripping down his face as the girl’s— as El’s hand rests soft against his cheek. He blinks, takes a breath, pulls away. It’s a struggle to stand. In front of him, the _thing_ roars and roars, meat and viscera squelching as it shudders beneath the attacks. The awful fucking sentience powering it—wrong wrong wrong _wrong_ —is desperate to kill the girl behind him. She’s the same age as Max. A kid.

The barrage of fireworks slows, then stops. Someone is screaming from the upper deck. One of Max’s friends, maybe. God, they’re all so small. The thing is impossibly huge. Even with chunks of it sheared away during the light show, it looms over them like a nightmare. He helped build it. He should know how big it is. Still, the sheer size of it makes his heart stutter in his chest. It’s big, so fucking big, and it’s not dead. It shifts, gathers itself, and he helped build it. He knows somehow—some instinctive hindbrain bullshit, maybe, or a memory from his time as a puppet—what it’s going to do.

El’s been trawling through his head. She’ll read the play.

He’s in engineer boots on slick food court tiles, but it doesn’t matter. Even possessed, Billy knew how to plant his feet. He pushes off. One step. Two. El reaches up for him, screams as her arm wrenches, but he’s got her. He’s got her. The chittering shrieks of the tentacles howl after them, whipping through the air, but they’re gone. He’s around the corner, slamming through the door, pounding down the hallway. Max and one of her brat friends race after him. Her voice is hoarse, yelling for him, but he can’t stop.

 _Run_ , his father says, memory echoing dully in his head. _Run away, just like you always do._

He hasn’t thought of that in years.

His lungs ache. There’s fire spreading through his muscles, overused and full of poison. He keeps running. Halfway down a hall, then another right. He nearly wipes out rounding a corner, crashing into a door frame for a moment before he can steady himself and keep going. There’s blood on the ground. Blood on El’s face. He keeps running.

Max is yelling again, faint, begging him to stop. He keeps running. Hangs a left into a stairwell. He has to get El away, has to keep her safe from the _thing he built—_

A sound rocks the whole building, a blast like a dying mountain. His ears ring with it, loud and sharp, and he can’t keep his balance this time. He crumples against the stairs and that’s it. He can’t get back up. He tries anyway, tries to will himself back to his feet, but it’s no use.

“Billy.”

The thing is going to get them. He has to run.

Gentle hands reach for him, sliding down his arm, covering his fingers where they scrabble against the steps.

“Billy.” El’s voice, low and quiet. “Billy, it’s okay.”

It’s not. The shit he did, the shit he was going to do—

There’s an ugly sound then, like someone crying. His chest hurts. He can’t catch his breath.

Footsteps, then Max is there, sliding to her knees to grab his other hand, squeezing so tight that his bones ache. It’s— it’s a good hurt. Better than the rot he can feel sliding through his veins, bubbling out of his skin, oozing and awful.

“Billy,” El says again, this time like a question.

“Is it dead?”

Max’s grip on his hand tightens even further. She opens her mouth to answer, probably, or yell at him, but El beats her to it.

“Yes. It’s dead.” And then: “You saved me.”

The sound is back, someone crying. Distantly, he thinks it might be him.

Sirens start to wail in the distance, a faint chorus that just barely reaches them in the depths of the stairwell. They should move, but he doesn’t think he can. He stays right where he is, crashed out on the stairs, El and Max sitting by him. Holding him steady. The other kid is there too, uneasy, but held back by the force of El’s calm gaze.

That’s how the military people find them, a whole goddamn troop of them complete with tac vests and jackboots. All of them are loaded for bear, packing guns, grenades, some wicked-looking tasers. _Where the fuck were you?_ he wants to ask. Maybe he does ask it; his filter is absolutely gone. That shit would have been a hell of a lot better than fucking sparklers.

“Shut up, Billy,” Max snaps, but there’s no heat to it, just a choking sort of relief.

One of the goons eyes them with undisguised irritation. “You and your friends okay here?” he asks Max.

Again, El beats her to the punch.

“Yes. We’ll be okay.”

Somehow—

Somehow, lying on the dirty concrete floor and sick down to his bones at what he’s done, Billy believes her.

**ii. fire**

The heat wakes him.

It takes him a minute to place what’s going on, fighting through the monster’s innate fear to figure out that the crash—god, _fuck_ , his poor damn Camaro—sparked a fire. It’s licking through the electrical system, hot, acrid smoke starting to billow through the cabin. The firewall seems to be holding, but he can feel the heat rolling through it all the same, enough to make him sweat. Enough to make the monster squirm.

Against his own volition, his arm starts to move, reaching for the door handle.

 _No_ , he thinks desperately. _No, fuck—_

It’s the smart thing, what the monster wants him to do. It wants out. He should want out. He should absolutely get out of the burning car.

He tries to force his hand back away from the door. The muscles tremble and seize, pain washing through his veins like acid. His hand slows. The monster isn’t paying him much attention, just urging him to get away from the heat. It’s busy chasing the car, galloping after the Wheeler’s station wagon, convinced it’s got the girl in its sights. The air feels like it’s cooking him alive.

 _Out. Out out out_ , the monster commands him.

 _No_ , he thinks back, vicious. Fire is bubbling the paint on the hood now. He has to get out. No. It’s so hot. He has to stay in.

The urge to leave is fainter now, weakened by time and heat. There are spots floating across his vision, drifting down like ash. He feels like he did in the direct sun on the lifeguard tower, like the sauna: heat flaying him open, peeling him apart and ripping him up. Worse than the tower, worse than the sauna, so much worse. It’s so hot, so fucking painful— it has to be now. Throat burning from the smoke, he wrenches his mind away from the monster as hard as he can, feels the connection thin and fray like a worn out rubber band, stretching, stretching—

The rage hits him just as it snaps, the cold alien fury that drove the monster to build itself, to take Billy, to rip the world apart to try and kill that girl. It crashes into him like a thunderclap, a boom that echoes in the empty space left behind as the monster’s claws vanish from his mind. Blind with relief as he finally lets himself scrabble for the door, he doesn’t process what he’s seeing until Max’s voice slices through him.

“Shit—”

He was staring out toward the mall, a deserted exit from a side hallway. Still staring, but now, staring back: three kids, frozen in terror as the car door finally gives and he tumbles to the pavement.

It knows.

They run.

He forces himself to his feet, groaning. He should hurt more, but instead of pain, all he feels is a numb relief. He’s either fine or halfway to dead. Whichever it is, it doesn’t matter right now. He books it after the kids. They have to get away. They have to hide.

It knows. It’s coming. The ground trembles behind him as he limps into the mall, going as fast as he can on a fucked up leg.

It doesn’t take long to catch up. They were practically carrying the girl, and now they’re stuck waiting for the elevator. Can’t think past the fear.

“Billy,” Max is saying, terror and a stupid, desperate hope scrawled plain across her face. “Billy, you don’t have to do this. Your name is Billy, Billy Hargrove. You live on 48—”

“4819 Cherry Lane,” he rasps out, voice fucked from all the smoke. “I know, Maxine.” He swallows, tries to make himself sound less terrifying. “It’s gone. The Camaro caught on fire and the heat chased the thing out, but it saw you before it went.”

“Billy—”

“It saw you,” he says again, nearly a shout. “It’s coming. We have to _go_.”

The brat with the bowl cut—the Wheeler kid?—looks like he’s ready to fight him, but Billy doesn’t give him the chance, just grabs the girl and snaps for Max and Wheeler to follow him. The girl is small. There’s blood on her face, smeared in rusty streaks above her mouth like her nose has been bleeding. She’s awfully light for a girl with superpowers.

“Stairs,” he says, and Max, thank fuck, doesn’t argue. She bolts ahead of him and yanks the door open. He takes the steps two at a time, ignoring the way his muscles scream at the work. Up one flight, two, and then he ducks back out into a hallway.

“Where are we _going_?” Wheeler demands, but a roar shakes the building before Billy can respond, and well, that answers that. There’s nowhere to go. The thing’s here.

“Shut up,” he barks, too loud. Shit. He dials it back. “Stay quiet. It doesn’t know where we are, and until it does, all it can do is crash around on the first floor.”

They huddle right where they are, crouched between a shoe store and some shitty record place, nearly invisible in the shadows but still so exposed. The girl’s heartbeat flutters against her ribs, fast and terrified. He keeps his grip easy, tries not to think too hard about— about anything. Max inches closer, slips one hand into the girl’s and rests the other on his arm.

The monster roars, angry. He can tell just from the sound. He hates it. But then it’s rumbling, stalking slowly through the lower level. Hunting.

Max’s fingers dig into his skin, five bright points of pain that flare against the numb ache creeping through his bones. He stifles a grunt, biting back the noise as best he can. The mall is silent around them, eerie and still until it isn’t. Doors slam open, footsteps running, a strange hissing, and then the monster screams. It’s— the fucking kids. Harrington, Wheeler, Byers and the kids. They came back. They’re pelting the thing with fireworks? Fireworks. Bright flashes of color that disorient the monster where they don’t blow holes in it. It’s the stupidest fucking thing he’s ever seen.

It’s working.

The mall smells like black powder and burning meat. The thing roars and screams, but it still doesn’t know where he and the girl are. Maybe, maybe it’ll be enough.

Somehow, miraculously, it is. The kids run out of fireworks, but there’s a scream from one of their walkies, something that sounds like _close the gate_ , and then a boom echoes up from deep beneath the mall—

A final howl, and then the monster collapses. Dead. Nothing but a pile of meat and bone, grotesque and awful. He can’t look at it. He turns away and calls out to the kids instead.

“Fireworks,” he says. “Really?”

Max finally lets go of his arm but only so she can smack him. He doesn’t have to pretend to wince. The numbness is fading away. Everything hurts.

The girl clocks the wince, meeting his gaze with a solemnity no teenager should possess. There’s no judgment in her expression as her friends swarm over them. No forgiveness either, but he’s not stupid enough to expect that.

“El,” one of them shouts, “get away from him!”

“It’s okay,” Max is saying. “It’s really him— his stupid car caught fire and the heat chased it out—”

A bunch of goons in military gear start pouring into the mall, streaming in through the hallways and rappeling down from helicopters. The cavalry’s here.

He can’t help it. He tips his head back and laughs, hoarse and rough, voice still a mess from the smoke. Max breaks off to glance back at him, gaze sharp and a little bit scared.

“Fuck,” he wheezes. “We thought this town was gonna be boring.”

He’s nothing but ache from head to toe. There’s a giant fucking monster—one he helped build—lying dead in the mall, military thugs swarming everywhere. Thirty-something people dead. He’s got no idea what happens next, but Max is laughing with him now, gasping for breath while the rest of her friends stare at them like they’ve lost their minds.

For now, that’s enough.

**iii. roar**

“Seven feet.”

The words echo through him like a stone through still water. He remembers.

It’s like coming up for air after an eternity underwater. His lungs heave, eyes watering as he gasps for air. When he finally surfaces, the girl is still talking. He can barely hear her over the monster’s screams, but it doesn’t matter. His mind is clear for the first time in days.

He struggles to his feet, limbs heavy, heart beating too fast. The monster is impossibly huge. A mountain of meat and bone, like something out of a shitty horror movie. It— that _thing_ was in his mind, it trapped him, made him a _puppet—_

He’s going to be sick, but years of swallowing down blood and bile whenever Neil smacks him around come in handy. He forces it down, wills away the urge. Bares his teeth at the thing. The last firework burns away in the smoky air. The monster is staring at him. Sizing him up. It wants the girl behind him. _El_ , he thinks. That’s what the kids called her. It wants El.

Billy plants his fucking feet. If it wants her, it’s going to have to go through him first.

It will, some distant part of him registers, but he doesn’t care. He feels like a fuse that’s finally burned down to nothing: furious. Ready to kill something.

It roars and—

He roars back. Screams at it, days and days of rage boiling out of him at once, so loud it rips at his throat. He tastes blood.

The monster doesn’t flinch. Instead, it whips a tentacle at him. The thing chitters through the air, prehensile and hungry. It’s going to take him out and get to El. Somewhere above him, a kid is hollering through radio static, desperate, something about closing a gate. The monster didn’t tell him jack shit while it controlled him, but he’s not stupid. This— _thing_ isn’t from here. The gate has to be the link to wherever the fuck it’s from. If he can just stall it long enough...

Billy doesn’t bother screaming at it again, just charges straight at it. He meets the tentacle head-on, hands outstretched like he’s catching a goddamn bounce pass. Grabs it, sets his stance, and _yanks_ , twisting as hard as he can. The monster howls in agony. It wasn’t expecting a fight. It wasn’t expecting any of this.

Two more tentacles come flying at him. He drops the one he’s holding, catches the one on his right. His left side is on fire, but he twists again, grins as the thing howls once more. The tentacles are like ligaments, he remembers. Force them to move the wrong way and they’re useless. Basic torsion.

It pulls away, staring at him. It’s going to do something different this time. He probably won’t survive it. Max is screaming from somewhere behind him, begging him to run. He hit her, he thinks distantly. He hit her, and he’ll never get the chance to apologize for it—

The mall must have a sub-basement or something because a boom rocks the floor beneath their feet, and then the monster just collapses. All that hate, all that fury just— gone. He stares at it, almost baffled. The thing’s dead, and he’s still alive.

_I guess they closed the gate._

Max is at his side in a heartbeat, trying to slip her hand into his.

“God, Maxine,” he says, trying not to wince at the taste of blood. “I’ve got monster goo all over me. You don’t— you don’t wanna touch that shit.”

“Shut up,” she snaps at him, but she listens, dropping his hand to wrap him up in a fierce hug instead, careful not to touch the wound on his side. It still hurts, but he doesn’t say anything.

“You idiot!” Her voice is muffled. “I can’t believe you just charged the mind flayer like that!”

 _Mind flayer._ That sounds like nerd shit, but he doesn’t say it. It’s accurate. He feels like he’s been flayed open, cut down to the quick by that thing’s presence in his head. A soft tap on his arm brings him out of his thoughts. It’s El, pale and exhausted but grinning all the same.

“Seven feet,” she says again, then nods over at the monster’s corpse. The thing was a hell of a lot bigger than some kiddie wave off the California coast, but she knows that. There’s a shy sort of slyness to her expression, an invitation to an inside joke. Friendship, maybe, if he’s not imagining things.

The whole thing is absolutely surreal.

Max still has him in a death grip. He’ll have to pry her loose soon, deal with the kids pouring down from the upper deck, hollering for El as they tumble down the stairs. Do something about his side, probably. It’s bleeding sluggishly now, soaking through his shirt. He should sit down before he falls down.

He sways a little bit but stays on his feet. It can wait a few more seconds. He lets Max hold on and grins back at El.

“Yeah,” he says. “Seven feet.”

**iv. fight**

He gets to his feet like he doesn’t have a snowball’s chance in hell of—

 _Of what?_ he thinks. Stopping it? There’s no way he’ll manage that, let alone stay alive through the attempt. Maybe if it weren’t the size of the fucking mall he’d have a shot, but the thing is huge. Hunched in on itself as it tries to avoid the fireworks, it’s still massive, towering over him like some fucked up B movie monster, fifty feet of claymation gone wrong. Except its not clay, is it? It’s people. Meat and bone and viscera, a beast made from the melted flesh of everyone he helped it take.

 _Shit_ , he thinks dimly. _I’m gonna be sick._

But there’s no time. The fireworks are gone, nothing left but smoke. Nothing left but the monster. He swallows down bile and sets his feet, watching as it sizes him up. Behind him, he can hear the girl’s breathing pick up.

It snakes a tentacle out, slow at first, like there’s any way he could stop it. What the fuck does it think he’s gonna do? He can barely stay standing.

Whatever made it hesitate doesn’t last long. The tentacle whips out toward him like a snake, headed for the girl. He throws his hands up on instinct. Fingers spread, palms cupped like he’s— like he’s gonna catch a fucking pass—

Instead:

Pain rockets through his skull, nauseating and sharp. Bile rushes back into his mouth. He breathes through it, trying desperately to focus. Hell, to stay upright. When he can see through the agony, he nearly topples over from shock. There’s— power blasting from his outstretched hands. Power like the shit the girl could do, flinging him against walls and diving into his memories. Ripping the monster apart with nothing but her will.

 _What the fuck_ , he thinks dimly. But it’s real: he’s holding the thing off, keeping it back like he’s leashed it with steel cables.

It roars at him, stunned and angry but nowhere close to giving up. Three more tentacles come flying at him. Just holding it off isn’t going to be enough. His head feels like it’s going to burst. There’s something dripping down his face, coppery and warm.

“Fucking come on!” he screams, ignoring the blood. His vision is going white and fuzzy at the edges, but he shoves out with his hands, flings them left, again and again and again.

The monster follows like it’s a puppet on strings, slamming into a storefront, screaming when it hits a support pillar. The upper deck shakes. He bashes it against the pillar again, over and over until he can’t anymore. There’s blood all over his face, staining his teeth and making him gag, but the thing’s not dead.

Somewhere in the back of his mind, he can hear Neil shouting at him for running away. He hasn’t thought of that in years.

 _Fuck you_ , he thinks back. _I’m not running._

“Billy,” he hears the girl say. “Stop—”

He doesn’t.

The monster flies into the pillar one more time, and then a crashing boom echoes through the mall. For a minute he thinks he took out the support pillar and now the whole damn mall is going to collapse on them, but the pillar holds. The floor trembles, faint, like a faraway earthquake, and then quiets. The monster falls still.

It looks dead, but he’s not sure. God, his head is killing him.

“Billy,” someone is saying. Max? “Billy, you need to sit down—”

He collapses before they can finish admonishing him, knees buckling. Small hands catch him as he falls, Max and the girl trying and failing to hold him up. They lower him down to the floor with surprising gentleness. He can barely make his eyes focus, but it looks like Max is crying.

“Maxine,” he manages, then has to stop. It hurts to talk. Everything hurts.

“El, is he—”

“Shhhh,” the girl says. El. Her voice is a whisper. “It hurts, after.”

He fades in and out for a while after that. He finally comes to with the two of them sitting beside him in an ambulance. The doors are open. Beyond them, the mall parking lot is swarming with first responders. Fire glows in the distance.

“Shit,” he says and watches with a grin as Max whips around to stare at him.

“God, Billy!” Her tone is admirably steady, but he’s known her long enough now that he can tell she’s on the verge of tears. “You scared me. What the hell were you thinking!”

It still hurts to talk, but someone’s wiped his face clean of blood, and his head doesn’t feel like it’s going to explode if he breathes wrong anymore. He can manage.

“I was thinking I shouldn’t let the fifty-foot monster eat you or your friend.”

“We had it handled.”

“Oh,” he says. “Absolutely. Definitely handled.”

They’ll have to— to talk about this shit at some point, how he hit her, how close he came to killing her friend. El? That can’t be her real name. But he’s not quite ready to see Max cry. It can wait.

“As soon as you’re out of the hospital I’m gonna kick your ass,” Max is promising, bravado solidly back in place. Good.

“Yeah, good luck with that,” he tells her, only a little bit smug. “I’ve got superpowers now.”

**v. wake**

It’s a fucking miracle that he catches the thing, another that he manages to hold it. But he helped build the monster; he knows that’s not all it’s got. He grunts when the second tentacle stabs at his side. A few pained breaths are all it takes before he tastes blood.

The third catches him on the other side, and he can’t keep his grip anymore. His hands fall away, fingers going slack. Another, then another. Each hit is agony. The monster has him pinioned like a bird in a display case, arms spread, eyes going glassy. He’s dying.

He’s dying before it rams a final tentacle through his chest, punching through his sternum. Blood gushes out over his lips as it drops him. Somehow, he hears Max screaming for him.

Fuck, Max. He hit her. That thing made him _hit her_ and he’ll never—

There’s a huge concussive boom. He feels it more than hears it, rattling up through the floor to echo through his spine and shattered ribs. It hurts. God, it hurts. Above him, the monster collapses. Whatever the fuck that sound it was, it killed the thing.

 _Good_ , he thinks, then Max is there.

“Billy! Billy, get up please—”

“I’m sorry.”

There’s a sharp darkness crawling along the edges of his vision, blotting out the eerie neon light. Shadowed blue and purple, Max looks ready to shatter.

He tries to say it again— _I’m sorry, Maxine_ —but the pain is fading away, and he can’t get his voice to work. The darkness finally crawls over him, swallowing him whole, and he’s gone.

He’s gone, until he isn’t.

He sucks in a breath, surprised when no paralyzing stab of agony accompanies it. No pain, just a lungful of stale air. Death smells like sterile sheets and disinfectant. Like a hospital.

 _Makes sense_ , he thinks, trying to work on prying his eyes open. _Lotta people die in hospitals._

Maybe they tried to revive him, after the— after the monster finally bit it. Max probably made them. She’s a force to be reckoned with when she wants to be. Which is most of the time, if he’s honest. He’ll miss her.

His eyes are finally open. Turns out death doesn’t just smell like a hospital: it looks like one, too. Beside him, a machine starts beeping, recording the heart rate he’s pretty sure he doesn’t have. The whole thing is fucking surreal.

It gets worse when a nurse hurries in, surprise quickly masked by calm professionalism. Why does he need a nurse if he’s fucking _dead?_

“Mr. Hargrove,” she starts.

“Don’t,” he snaps. God, his voice is so fucked. “Don’t call me that.”

The woman’s lips thin in annoyance, but before she can respond Max bursts through the door, a half-opened pack of M&Ms clutched in one hand, candy bouncing on the floor as she skids to a stop by his bed. He’s starting to think maybe he’s wrong about the whole “dead” thing.

“What the _fuck_ Billy!” Her voice is high and shrill. “I leave for five minutes to get something from the vending machine and that's when you decide to wake up?”

The nurse looks like she can’t decide whether to start on her tone or her language.

“Miss Hargrove—”

“Don’t call me that,” she snaps absently, not even sparing the woman a glance. Billy can’t help it. He snorts, then immediately regrets it when a wave of pain radiates out from his chest. Max looks like she wants to smack him, but instead, she just grips the bed rail so tightly her knuckles go white. “You almost—”

“Died?”

She doesn’t scold him for the interruption. Instead, her voice goes soft, barely a whisper. “Yeah,” she says. “You almost died.”

She looks so goddamn young. Vulnerable, like his death would have broken something in her. He hates that look. Max shouldn’t ever look like that, not on his account. He was a shit brother, too caught up in his own bullshit to do right by her.

“Yeah, well,” he says, deliberately ignoring how hoarse his voice is. He hasn’t talked in a while, that’s all. “I guess it didn’t stick.”

Her hands flex on the bed rail, knuckles white then pink then white again.

“I’m really glad you didn’t die,” she whispers. She swipes angrily at her face. He pretends not to notice. Max hates crying. It’s one of the few things they agree on. She glares at him afterward. “God, you unbelievable asshole! ‘I guess it didn’t stick.’”

“What?” he says. “You got a better response?”

“How about ‘thanks for sitting with me for three days while I was comatose,’ maybe? That would be a good one.”

“Three days—”

“Miss Har— Miss Mayfield,” the nurse interrupts. “We really do need to run some tests on your brother. If you could refrain from agitating him—”

He bites back a grin as he watches Max argue with the nurse. The woman wants to tell Neil and Susan he's awake, and Max isn’t having it. He leaves her to it. Eventually, the nurse huffs off to grab a doctor or have a rage-induced aneurysm or something. Max finally lets go of the bed rail to slip her hand into his, careful not to jostle the IV line.

It’s a hell of a thing, not being dead. He thinks maybe he could get used to it.

**Author's Note:**

> HI YES I'M FINE THANK YOU WHY DO YOU ASK
> 
> title from "american pie" by don mclean
> 
> [rebloggable](https://redbelles.tumblr.com/post/186319877273/its-big-so-fucking-big-and-its-not-dead-it) on tumblr. come say hello if you want to cry w/me about billy hargrove :/


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